Guardian columnist Chloë Hamilton has described the pumpkin-spiced latte as “a con” and called for an end to what she calls “Big Autumn” — the notion that enjoying the season is enough to sustain a whole personality.
Writing in the newspaper’s Opinion section as part of its “The hill I will die on” series, Hamilton said the familiar meme about golden leaves and pumpkin-spiced lattes arrives earlier every year. She recalled spotting one in early August, while readers were still enduring what she described as the summer’s fourth heatwave.
She attributes the phenomenon to an aesthetic built largely on brown and orange and distributed through Pinterest and Instagram, rather than to the season’s less appealing traits: grey drizzle, shorter days and the feeling that Christmas is closing in.
Hamilton states that she has no problem with autumn itself. She and her partner refer to it as “mud season”, she writes, because they own a spaniel and have two young children, and their house will not feel genuinely clean again until the end of March. She adds that she is fond of roast dinners and fairy lights, likes oversized jumpers and finds Bonfire Night magical, although she avoids Halloween.
Her objection, she explains, is to the impulse to define oneself through preferences — a habit she says social media has kept alive, pointing to being a “cat person” or a “boy mum” as parallel examples. She compares it to Christian Girl Autumn, a viral meme from 2019 that she describes as an antidote to Hot Girl Summer.
According to Hamilton, the trend highlights a modern compulsion to build and curate an identity instead of simply inhabiting one, and she argues it shows a lack of imagination. She concedes that lives spent balancing always-on jobs, busy WhatsApp groups and the high cost of living may leave people too burned out to add more detail.
The columnist also suspects her irritation has a commercial root, writing that spending and social media are intertwined and that autumn has become a means of persuading people to part with money. A pumpkin-spiced chai latte carries a price, she notes, and the new-season chocolate-brown knit is framed as something the buyer needs.
Autumn, she concludes, has become a lifestyle and a commodity rather than merely the passing of the baton from one season to the next. She accepts, however, that she may simply hate drizzle.
COMMENTS